at first bite

I don’t know that I’ve never seen mushrooms this big. It’s the season for these earthy giants and the markets are filled with them. Annic is cooking them up right now with olive oil and garlic, and she will serve them for lunch with duck and a celery root slaw.

cafe

Notes:

I saw 4 women eating baguettes or sandwiches on the street.  Skinny bitches.  I love them.

I saw 1 woman eating an eclair as she window-shopped.  Genius.

I found my dream car, this little thing called Le Figaro.  It might have been a custom car whose owner christened it Le Figaro.

I ran in the Parc Monceau, a luscious neighborhood park filled with adorable French children, and their equally adorable parents, playing.  This is where my boyfriend would play when he was a child.  It made me love him even more.

On the way back from my run, I stopped in at the Monoprix in search of speculoos butter, which Hidden Kitchen chef Braden calls “crack goo.”  I didn’t find the crack goo, but I did find 23 new species of cookies and 14 new species of butter, and 17 new species of yogurt.  It was a brave new world, and I can’t wait to return.

I walked out of Monoprix (still in running gear, mind you) with two boxes of cookies and yogurt.  As I got lost finding my way home, I ingested too many cookies.

I like sitting in cafes in the afternoon and having an espresso.  It’s very good.

My mapped out guide of eating, drinking, shopping and hammaming.

When I was a child, my stepfather Carl would bake bread.  I don’t know where he learned to do it, maybe from his mother or older sister, growing up on the farm in southern Brazil.  He didn’t work off a recipe; the flour and yeast and water and salt just sort of came together in his hands.  My little brothers Cole and Kyle would be picking lone Cheerios off the floor and playing with toys under the table, my brother Elan and I making masterpieces with our fingers against the condensation that had gathered on the big kitchen window.  That warm yeasty smell filled our little kitchen, even Rico the Evil Parrot seemed to enjoy it.

I think we were always a little surprised at how small the loaf was when it came out of the oven.  How had something so little filled a whole room with goodness? We ate it immediately, still warm, when it was simultaneously chewy and crusty, letting our tabs of Land’O'Lakes melt into every crevice, and licking our lips of extra guava paste.  The guava paste was Carl’s touch.  We had the circular cans from Goya, and that concentrated jelly on the buttery bread reminded me of my other guilty pleasure: the Cuban guava pastry. My mother was the pastry chef of the family.  But the days that Carl baked bread were very good days

Bread is the ultimate comfort food, for better or for worse.  The smell of baking bread always makes me think that things are alright in the world.  It’s one of those foods most everyone shares a love for.  We break bread together.

So go ahead and indulge in that fresh-baked loaf from your local bakery.  In SF, be it Tartine, Paris, Bread and Roses or Rose Bakery, New York, Grandaisy, Sullivan St., Balthazar, Blue Ribbon, Amy’s, Eli’s….

There are few moments more satisfying than this: a hot, frothy cappuccino, a fresh-baked croissant, a magazine and the time to enjoy all of it.